Soaring 'Hive' exhibit blends intimate details into its giant scale

The soaring ''Hive'' exhibit is on display at the National Building Museum as part of the museum's annual interactive art installation series. Rough Cut (no reporter narration).

▲ Hide Transcript

▶ View Transcript

ROUGH CUT (NO REPORTER NARRATION)
STORY: The soaring "Hive" exhibit at the National Building Museum in Washington is set to open on Tuesday (July 4) as part of the museum's annual interactive art installation series inside its Great Hall.
Standing over 60 feet tall (over 18 meters), the exhibit's three interconnected chambers are made up of some 2,700 lightweight cardboard tubes that vary in size from just several inches to 10 feet high (over 3 meters).
The silver and magenta cylinders are stacked on top of one another in an interlocking fashion using simple slots instead of relying entirely on glue.
Jeanne Gang, the architect who designed "Hive," says the structure is similar to the vaulted shapes of a cathedral which are designed to hold their own weight. She told Reuters during a media preview of the exhibit Monday (July 3) that Hive is also the tallest structure ever built inside the museum.
"We thought this is such a big space, we wanted to go high. We wanted to make something that had some monumentality but at the same time, inside, a certain intimacy," she said.
Visitors can view "Hive" - a giant central chamber bookended by two much smaller ones - from the lofty vantage point of the museum's fourth floor inner balcony.
But they will also be invited to explore the dark, intimate interiors of "Hive" at ground level, where they can interact with multiple acoustic elements like chimes and small drums.
Gang said the magenta color inside each tube was inspired by the mass women's marches in Washington in January, which aimed to protest the inauguration of President Donald Trump.
"Hive" is open to the public through September 4.

Reuters, the news and media division of Thomson Reuters, is the world’s largest international multimedia news provider reaching more than one billion people every day. Reuters provides trusted business, financial, national, and international news to professionals via Thomson Reuters desktops, the world's media organizations, and directly to consumers at Reuters.com and via Reuters TV. Learn more about Thomson Reuters products: